Re: federated free software movement

[jahoti]

On 11/17/21 1:10 AM, Arthur Torrey wrote:
> A couple of points -
>
> 1. The original proposal was for an effort, presumably SEPARATE from 
> LibrePlanet to make alliances IN THOSE AREAS WHERE OUR INTERESTS ALIGN with 
> folks such as the OSHWA, and other open source hardware advocates, and the 
> Right to Repair folks.  I believe there is a good bit of overlap since it is 
> easier to write software for open hardware, and there is potential to use Free 
> Software tools to repair hardware, etc...  I did not see anything in the 
> original proposal to suggest that THIS LIST should endorse non-Free hardware / 
> software, nor did I intend it in my posts on the subject.  I do believe that 
> any effort to make alliances with other communities needs to be tolerant of the 
> needs and practices of those communities.  The reality is that these 
> communities use or do things with hardware that needs binary blobs or 
> proprietary software.  We are not going to make many friends if we come at them 
> with an attitude that they are going to Software Hell for doing so...

Certainly; however, that is not how I would understand the ethics of 
software freedom, and I would freely condemn anyone who takes such a 
view. The only perpetrators of injustice- many victims themselves rather 
than willing and knowing participants- are those who pressure or drive 
others to relinquish their computing freedoms.

I'm not aware of any situation where that is common in the listed 
communities except inasmuch as hardware is promoted without clearly 
indicating the required blobs (or that the whole system is proprietary 
software), even sometimes on projects that are misleadingly labelled 
"(fully) open source". There are no doubt parallel limitations the other 
groups could identify, and raising concerns in the interest of 
co-operating to improve does not seem fractious.

> 2. Reality check - A lot of people build Open Source Hardware around the Raspi 
> and similar boards that need binary blobs....  From their standpoint it's a 
> good choice to do so, as it's a low cost, readily available board with plenty 
> of documentation and support.  Is it better to approach them with a demand that 
> they start over with a different board that is blob free but offers no other 
> benefits, or to thank them for making a project that is mostly free by our 
> standards and suggest that they MIGHT want to look at a freer alternative for 
> their next project, or even ask them how you can help open some other device to 
> whatever degree is possible...

While the latter approach is indeed the most reasonable, it also doesn't 
preclude recognizing that the project has ethical problems. It is quite 
possible to state that respectfully without blaming or holding complicit 
the project's creator.

> 3. Reality check - You have a repair shop - customers come to you with hardware 
> that needs fixing and needs proprietary tools to do so.  Which benefits your 
> business more - gritting your teeth and using the tools, or telling the 
> customers they made a bad choice in hardware and sending them away???

There a number of possible options here.

Firstly, telling the customer of issues with the chosen hardware is 
neither problematic nor mutually exclusive with fixing that hardware. 
Phrasing it as "you made a bad choice in hardware" would be unjust 
victim-blaming, of course; however, a basic outline of how the 
manufacturer's practices present a danger to both local repair business 
and the customer's ownership of their device could be valuable (or at 
least not counter-productive).

Secondly, as the hypothetical owner of such a shop, would I not have the 
latitude to make decisions for reasons other than financial gain? 
Obviously the need to break even and draw a livable income establishes a 
baseline; there is nevertheless the option to sacrifice anything beyond 
that in this (presumably) privately-held business with very few exceptions.

Finally, gritting your teeth and using the tools does not compromise 
anyone's software freedom except your own (or the business's, perhaps). 
Tragic as that is, it is a fair response and a poor reflection only on 
whoever wrote the tools and the hardware.

> 4. Personal reality - I mentioned earlier that I need a proprietary closed 
> software program that only runs on a proprietary OS in order to adjust the 
> programming on my power chair...  I got a comment back that I should figure out 
> how to do it w/ Free Software....  So let me see, I have a proprietary 
> undocumented piece of hardware that I need to totally reverse engineer from the 
> hardware communications protocol to it's internal data structures, along w/ how 
> to read and write to it (as a non-programmer) OR use an existing set of 
> non-free tools that already does what I need?  (and there is *NO* commercially 
> available Free Software compatible wheelchair control hardware, I'm using what 
> is arguably the most open of the available systems)  Tough decision....(NOT!)   
> If I wasn't already a Free Software supporter, where do you think I might have 
> told the person telling me to figure out how to use free software to stick his 
> GNU?

I do agree with you that comment was quite unfair; this is an injustice 
perpetrated by power chair manufacturers, doubly so given the cost of 
rejecting their products. You are not responsible for fixing it.

Of course, if you- or anyone else with access to such hardware- have the 
skills it would be a great deed to work on the problem regardless. That 
does not put you in the wrong for *not* having done so.

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